
SSIONS V 
MILITARISM 



RICHARD TAYLOR STEVENSO! 






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Missions Versus 
Militarism 



By 
Richard Taylor Stevenson 

Ohio Wesleyan University 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



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Copyright, 19 16, by 
Richard Taylor Stevenson 




MAR 25 1916 

©CI.A427397 



TO 
BISHOP J. W. BASHFORD 



CONTENTS 

Pags 

Introduction 9 

I. Rival Imperialisms 11 

II. Is War to be Abolished? 31 

III. The Role of the Prophet 47 

IV. Missions, the Only Alternative 57 

V. Crisis for America 75 

VI. The Patience of Faith 95 

The Peace Program 106 



INTRODUCTION 

Ten years ago the title "Missionary In- 
terpretation of History" proved sufficiently 
fascinating to warrant a booklet for its 
development. The fact that it was wel- 
comed by many approved the venture. 

None then dreamed that in less than a 
decade the European world would be reel- 
ing under the intoxication of such a war 
as staggers the most riotous imagination. 
Many have been led to suspect that the only 
fitting title for all time, past, present and to 
come, is "The Military Interpretation of 
History," and that what we had thought 
was soon to be only a bad record of the 
past is now to prove a frightful and ever- 
present reality — record and prediction and 
fulfillment. 

9 



Introduction 

As the year 191 5 gives place to its suc- 
cessor, it is with pity, heart-sickness, dis- 
gust, and rising abhorrence that we are 
tempted to believe that the old prophecy of 
the coming transformation of sword and 
spear into pruning hook and plowshare is 
but a delusion. 

Is it so? 



IQ 



RIVAL IMPERIALISMS 

Two age-long imperialisms are to-day 
challenging each other for right of way. It 
may be that the title should be "Peace and 
War" until the end of the world. If not, 
how shall we justify the main title ? 

As this century came to its being, both 
forces were at climax. Never before were 
there so many Bibles, never so many bullets. 

Can they both coexist? Will it be a 
drawn battle ? If the former is to win, how 
long will it take? Such questions are stir- 
ring in human hearts. 

So far as the present season offers solu- 
tion for the inquiry, there is little doubt 
that the poet sings truly: 

II 



Missions Versus Militarism 

And man, at war with man, hears not 
The love song which they bring; 

O hush the noise, ye men of strife, 
And hear the angels sing. 

Have poets been all the while merely 
vaporing? And are Christian folk facing 
the gigantic alternative, either the Man on 
the Cross or the Man on Horseback ? What 
a world quandary confronts us ! 

One need not read far back into history 
to realize that murderous strife has con- 
trolled too untenderly, aye, too savagely, the 
thought, the valor, the blood, the wealth of 
mankind to make it worth while to offer any 
freshly satisfying words upon what increas- 
ing millions of men have been praying might 
soon become an obsolete verb, its only tense 
a past one in human speech. 

Of the two master forces war has had 
larger possession for longer time of the 
imagination of man. Missions arrived com- 
paratively late upon the scene. The slogan 

IZ 



Rival Imperialisms 

of the newcomer, "Peace upon earth," was 
so unfamiliar that the few who gave it wel- 
come at first faced multiplied discourage- 
ments before they were able to recruit their 
numbers with those who believed that it 
could be worked out in human history. The 
program was so foreign to that with which 
men had rendered men familiar — the vile 
ambitions, the disgusting brutalities, the 
mocking miseries, battle agony, prison de- 
spair, and cruel slavery — that timid anti- 
militarists have needed all possible encour- 
agement to enable them to make good their 
humane creed. 

The distress of the Christian Church is 
pitiful to behold. The abnormal, so diabol- 
ically unique, jostles the mind to strange 
predictions. Some new form of fear or 
some fresh grip of faith accompanies each 
unusual disturbance in human society. The 
awful upheaval of 19 14- 191 6 — and how 
much further on none can say — has had its 

13 



Missions Versus Militarism 

effect upon biblical exegesis. Some have 
found it comparatively easy to forecast the 
winding up of the existing dispensation. 

A spectacular, rather than an orderly dis- 
position of causes is soon to take place. 
Paper and pencil are at work in figuring the 
year of the coming of our Lord. The awful 
tumult of the hour suggests to some who 
profess faith in the Redeemer a method for 
closing up the affairs of the Kingdom, a 
method strangely similar to the iron mode 
of earthly rulers, in which dreadnaughts and 
furor and intrenched hosts are a prere- 
quisite for the Final Day. Christianity is 
to wind to its close in a sorry effort to copy 
Caesarism. The last thing that Jesus Christ 
sought to achieve now becomes the final 
word of prophecy, and history ends with a 
bitter reversal of the leavenlike prowess of 
the first centuries. 

As if this were not a bitter satire upon 
Christianity, some claim that civilization is 

14 



Rival Imperialisms 

hastening to its collapse. A forbidding 
eclipse, it is said, draws near. Because 
cathedral walls are crumbling under explod- 
ing shells, and ancient edifices which cannot 
be replaced, upon which art has lavished its 
every resource and religion its sanctifying 
customs, are in ruins, shortsighted judgment 
has commingled in bad perspective the fail- 
ure of art and the folly of faith. Forsooth 
because under the inspiration of art and of 
worship walls and colored windows and 
high towers sprang skyward in beauty, 
which now lie low in dishonored ashes, it is 
reasoned that neither the mere image in 
stone nor the more enduring life of love 
which gave art its glory can hope for longer 
power among men. Has it come to this? 
And is a thunder-storm to deprive men of 
their sanity? 

Nevertheless, the outlook is dolorous 
enough to cause alarm and profound dis- 
quiet. Such a calamity has never over- 

15 



Missions Versus Militarism 

whelmed in so short a time whole peoples. 
We are tempted to ask, What is the alterna- 
tive? Are we near ing the last lap of the 
maelstrom of history, drifting toward a vio- 
lent end, or are we to emerge with con- 
fused minds from the horrid accompani- 
ments of the present strife with all its embit- 
tered political and industrial and moral con- 
ditions? If the former, it is nothing less 
than folly to urge the cause of missions 
upon a bewildered and despairing Church. 
If the latter, it may be possible for us to 
link up the policy of the Church, which 
refuses to surrender its beneficent program, 
with more than its ancient fervor even in 
the midst of the present confusion, and go 
forward into the fairer day for which devout 
souls make constant prayer. Why may we 
not venture to prophesy, even though our 
eyes are veiled to the immediate to-morrow ? 
Something has been said of a powder 
cart as a unique carrier for the gospel. This 

16 



Rival Imperialisms 

is not to justify militarism, but to illustrate 
the fact that Scripture is wiser than men in 
its averment that "God makes the wrath of 
man to praise him." Either we understand 
war, from abundant experience or from 
study of its nature in the past, and can 
suffer no permanent disturbance of our 
faith in the inevitableness of The Kingdom 
despite the latest exhibitions of war's un- 
speakable ravages, or we stand face to face 
with a new and mysterious show of demonic 
power, Anno Domini, 1916, and so far do 
we forget our ancient mastery of sin's antag- 
onisms that we are about to confess for the 
first time in all history that the Church is 
unequal to the task of supplanting the king- 
dom of brute force with the Kingdom of 
Grace. Is it so? 

What is there that is insoluble in the 
plans, ambitions, and grand strategy, which 
lend their accumulated dread to the struggle 
under which the Old World is writhing? 

17 



Missions Versus Militarism 

We answer: Certainly in its scale it out- 
runs all previous strife; in the summons to 
every conceivable device for mastering the 
foe it has had no fellow; the sky, the field, 
the depths of the sea witness to the devilish 
versatility with which militarism deploys 
its most recent recruits. These stamp a 
peculiar character upon the war. Yet in 
spirit it exhibits nothing new. Aside from 
the superlative distresses which defy the 
descriptive word; aside from the hidden 
results of a political character which wait 
upon the conclusion of strife, and the mur- 
derous quality of the new science which 
men once thought was for peace, but now is 
seen exercising its fathomless impartiality 
under the orders of great captains, the war 
is all of a sort with every war of former 
days. The swath of death is wider; the 
scale of horrors is more extended ; the sums 
of money have already mounted beyond 
mental grasp ; the years of recovery chal- 

18 



Rival Imperialisms 

lenge even dimmest hopes; but the ratios 
will not surpass many of the conflicts under 
which nations and races have fought and 
blasphemed and suffered and lost in the 
past. 

The importance of the subject cannot 
have a full survey. Not to mention such 
scourges as Attila or Timour, turn the light 
upon one of the humane fighters of history 
— Caesar. For his day Julius Caesar was 
notably considerate of his foes. Yet in 
the conquest of Gaul a million inhabitants 
were killed, and another million were enslav- 
ened; in all, one fourth of the population 
fell under the heavy hand of the conqueror. 
Cromwell in Ireland and Wellington in 
Spain ordered or allowed their soldiers to 
do such butchery and loot and outrage as 
shame the historian to recite. Worse than 
these, in the Thirty Years' War, almost 
incredible disaster and shameful atrocities 
make up the long record. In this, the 

19 



Missions Versus Militarism 

most pitiless of all conflicts under which 
Germany ever groaned, she lost four fifths 
of her population. German writers have 
said that in certain sections of the land over 
which Tilly and Wallenstein trod with crud- 
est heels, it took two hundred years for 
recovery. 

Does anyone believe that it will take even 
one fourth of that time for Europe to rise 
up from her present desolation? This is 
not to intimate for a moment that reason- 
able excuse can be found for the unspeak- 
able calamity of this hour. The point of 
the argument is simply to show in what 
respect the present differs from the past, and 
wherein a truer perspective of history and a 
fuller faith in God will urge mankind on 
to such a consummation as cannot be won, 
ought not to be won, by violence, but is at 
the call of moral leverage and appeal. 

In our extremity let faith take lessons 
from the calm prophecy of the great leader 
20 



Rival Imperialisms 

of the Church in the fourth century. When 
Italy was in an ague of fear under the tread 
of the Barbarian hosts from the North, and 
the entire rim of the Mediterranean quiv- 
ered with terror, Saint Augustine rebuked 
the fears of those who beheld in the tum- 
bling walls of the Roman world the utter 
collapse of the whole Christian edifice, and 
gave to the thinking ages his immortal "City 
of God," the overmastering asset of all the 
future, no matter what should befall the 
"City of Seven Hills" on the Tiber. 

To the vision of Saint Augustine we may 
add words from a scholar of France, Pro- 
fessor Seignobos, who remarked, when 
speaking of startling changes in history, that 
we should not be alarmed by what is un- 
usual : "Humanity has passed through great 
transformations without perishing. The 
history of civilization should teach us to 
have confidence in the future." Brave 
words, O son of France. 
21 



Missions Versus Militarism 

Of the two, Missions and Militarism, it 
is clear that the latter has made up to date 
the greater noise on earth, and men have 
become accustomed to its clangor and fierce 
power. It has earned hard names, and the 
harder the older it has grown. Known so 
long, it has been measured and titled in all 
its wrath. From Shakespeare to Sherman 
men have invoked the worst names with 
which to call it to mind. The poet speaks 
out in Henry VI, "O war ! thou son of hell." 
And the soldier in pithier condensation says, 
"War is hell !" Despite this characteriza- 
tion, men have glorified war almost beyond 
belief, not merely in ancient times and 
among ferocious leaders, but in modern 
times and among some of the gentlest of 
men, at least when they are stripped of their 
uniforms. 

Is it to Rome we turn? "Arms and the 
Man" start the old epic. Is it to the 
Psalms wherein one might hope to find 
22 



Rival Imperialisms 

the supreme statement among the Jews of 
a gentler creed and softer manners? Yet 
the same verse rings with the praise of God 
and the rattle of the sword: "Let the high 
praises of God be in their mouth, and a 
two-edged sword in their hand — to execute 
vengeance upon the heathen." The volume 
closes with tumults and terrors of war. 

Our latest hymnal does not lack the 
inspiration of the warrior spirit, and the 
saints under orders from the Nazarene go 
singing through the ages well known as 
"Soldiers of Christ." 

It has required several millenniums for 
men to rise to the level of James Russell 
Lowell : 

Ez for war, I call it murder, — 
Ther you have it plain and flat: 

I don't want to go no furder 
Than my Testyment for that. 

Yet the apologists for war as a factor in 
the slow evolution of history are not few, 

23 



Missions Versus Militarism 

and there is much to be said — for its useful- 
ness in days far gone by. 

The main credits for war come down 
to us from prehistoric and pagan ages. Nor 
is it disputed that even in Christian cen- 
turies some good has been achieved. 

In that "golden little book," as William 
James styled Walter Bagehot's Physics and 
Politics, the brilliant author recites the steps 
of civilization from earliest to latest times 
under the heads of "Preliminary Age," 
"Use of Conflict," "Nation Making," and 
"The Age of Discussion." Present events 
in Europe substantiate the conclusion of 
Bagehot — that the most conspicuous fact, 
perhaps the most showy, is the progress of 
the military art. He sums up his conclu- 
sions thus : "Taken as a whole, and allowing 
for possible exceptions, the aggregate fight- 
ing power of mankind has grown immensely, 
and has been growing continuously since 
we knew anything about it." 

24 



Rival Imperialisms 

Two ameliorating attendants deserve 
notice. First: "The military vices, too, of 
civilization seem to decline just as its mili- 
tary strength augments. . . . War both 
needs and generates certain virtues ; not the 
highest, but what may be called the pre- 
liminary virtues, as valor, veracity, the 
spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline." 
Second: In his comment upon Cromwell's 
saying, "Trust in God and keep your 
powder dry," Bagehot significantly adds: 
"The trust was of as much use as the 
powder, if not more; that high concentra- 
tion of steady feeling makes men dare every- 
thing and do anything. The mistake of 
military ethics is to exaggerate the concep- 
tions of discipline, and so to present the 
moral force of the will in a barer form than 
it ever ought to take; military morals can 
direct the ax to cut down the trees, but it 
knows nothing of the quiet force by which 
the forest grows." 

25 



Missions Versus Militarism 

That war is not wholly destructive has 
been maintained with much force of argu- 
ment, and its constructive part in civiliza- 
tion has been set forth even if facts and 
logic have to strain their credit in making 
the claim. That it secures mental expan- 
sion ; that it opens men's eyes to other men's 
worth ; that nations have gained new ideas ; 
that new arts and new humanities, and even 
new religions, have accompanied war down 
the ages may be fairly claimed. But to urge 
that "even when Rome went down under 
the men from the North, its values were 
saved; nothing of value that existed in 
Rome was lost ; it all reappeared in the his- 
tory of new kingdoms and wider regions" — 
this is to forget that what men have garbed 
in the guise of blessing was too often a 
curse. In attempting to show war a good, it 
has been overdone, ridiculously overdone. 
Ask the antiquarian delving in Mesopo- 
tamia, the banks of the Nile, the hills back 

26 



Rival Imperialisms 

from the Tiber. He will speak another 
tale as he unearths some costly "find." Lit- 
eratures take their share in the collapse 
which wars have brought. That soldiers 
have been boors as well as preservers of the 
best is shown from what the Roman general 
Mummius ordered after he captured Cor- 
inth. He forwarded paintings and statues 
to Rome for his triumph with the order that 
any lost on the way should be replaced by 
"others of equal value." 

However, to be fair, we must confess that 
boors are not the only leaders in war. 
Heroism, lofty patriotism, simple piety, have 
shared in a thousand stricken fields, and 
if not with intention, have involuntarily 
glorified war. 

Scholars with modern ideas of values in 
civilization confess that even religion owes 
something to war. Professors J. M. Powis 
Smith and A. C. McGiffert in their contri- 
butions to the American Journal of Theol- 

27 



Missions Versus Militarism 

ogy in 191 5, recognize the fact that to the 
ancient Hebrew Jehovah was his masterful 
military leader. Both prophet and soldier 
cooperated in holy enthusiasm. Jehovah 
functioned as a war-god. When in later 
epochs of Jewish history he fights no more 
it is because there is no one left to oppose 
him. 

The late Professor Cramb, in his last 
book, held that no great advance in either 
politics or religion had been made in the 
history of Europe apart from war. This is 
to take the extreme position of defense of 
war. It does not follow that what was a 
mighty adjunct to widening intelligence and 
national loyalty in past millenniums is ever- 
more to abide as a necessity and ever- 
more to continue the inevitable major note of 
history. It could not have been expected 
that the early Christians, environed by mili- 
tant peoples, would have swept from their 
path either the doctrine or the practice of 

28 



Rival Imperialisms 

militarism. The average Christian senti- 
ment favored war or succumbed to it. A 
few exceptions pointed the way to a more 
benign future. Tertullian and Origen and 
Cyprian were file leaders in the attempt to 
teach the true doctrine of a peaceful society, 
the latter anticipating Lowell in calling war 
"murder." 

So slowly did their softer views prevail — 
if they can be said ever to have prevailed — 
that the only alleviation of distresses that the 
Church of the Middle Ages could secure 
was the famous "Truce of God," wherewith 
for a few days to quiet the wrath of private 
conflicts. In the coming of Protestantism 
we see the great leaders, Luther and Calvin, 
in agreement with Saint Augustine, who 
eleven centuries earlier had encouraged 
Count Boniface, governor of North Africa, 
to defend with arms the cause of Chris- 
tianity against the Barbarians, yet showing 
mercy and not malice to captives. The 

29 



Missions Versus Militarism 

heroic Swiss reformer Zwingli died on a 
battlefield. However, the notion of a gentler 
form of war, if not its abolishment, has been 
making itself at home in the minds of men 
with the writings of Erasmus and Grotius 
and the Quakers. It is with gratitude we 
point to the work of the Red Cross heroes 
and heroines. Yet with all the increasing 
softnesses of war for which we now and 
then acknowledge obligation to the chaplain, 
the surgeon, the nurse, how may we hope 
to right ourselves before Him who made 
the great surrender to teach the mad world 
what humanity is able to accomplish through 
love? 

Mayhap the utmost that we can hope 
to accomplish is to tame the huge beast with 
whose rougher might they were more 
familiar. What if we can do away with it — 
a far worthier endeavor? Cutting claws 
of tigers is difficult if not dangerous. Hard 
work is ahead. 

30 



II 

IS WAR TO BE ABOLISHED? 

No more severe task has ever been set for 
man than the abolition of war. Will it ever 
be achieved ? God knows. 

It is something to point to small gains in 
the way of the softening of the spirit of 
the soldier. It may be that war is a bit more 
humane than when pagan Persian fought 
pagan Greek, or when Saladin measured 
swords with Richard the Lion-Hearted. 
But the evolution of an angel of mercy 
from the begrimed soldier in the trenches of 
Europe is apparently a problem for the ages. 

Just as we are cheering our hearts with 
the program of peace which rulers and 
people have laid upon the tables of diplo- 
macy for discussion, a rude awakening calls 
us to doubt the efficacy of the Christmas 

31 



Missions Versus Militarism 

clarion, and to suspect that if missions are 
to continue their blessed employ, it will have 
to be in company with militarism rather 
than after having captured both fortress and 
spirit of the age-long master of arms. 

If the two are to march down the future 
together, each one preserving its peculiar 
character, the one given to strife, the other 
settling quarrels, we shall have to accommo- 
date our hopes to a lower level of victory 
instead of that of an unqualified triumph 
over sin and wrong and selfish ambition. Is 
this the future? And is there no qualifica- 
tion, no modification of the manhood we are 
trying to regenerate ? 

One may answer : "This is no worse than 
what the simple-minded first Christians 
faced as they started out to win the world. 
They differed from us in this, that they had 
a promise back of them, while we have 
nearly two thousand years of magnificent 
achievement back of us." 

32 



Is War to be Abolished? 

What is our outlook ? 

At the time when our sky lightened with 
a happier and wholesome use of the mov- 
ing forces of history, and our leaders were 
saying that, granted certain conditions, we 
might have the gospel preached the world 
around to all men in a bare decade or two, 
lo, the sky fell apart and the falsity of our 
dreams smote us in the face. The following 
is a sample of the dreams some were dream- 
ing: Professor J. H. Robinson was discuss- 
ing just before the war broke out, "Influ- 
ences Favoring Universal Peace," and in his 
analysis of the problem placed emphasis 
upon the dreadful burdens of the standing 
armies, and of the cost of the new machin- 
ery of war. He rested his argument for 
peace upon the fact of the peace-making 
tendencies springing out of such calm-dis- 
turbing statistics. Yet how dismal a disap- 
pointment we have suffered! 

The goal toward which we were drawing 

33 



Missions Versus Militarism 

with our Hague conferences, and our peace 
treaties, and our various internationalisms, 
eludes our grasp. The program for the re- 
duction of armaments, which was so ur- 
gently demanded by some, was suddenly 
wrapped in clouds. Our former calcula- 
tions, hopes and prayers were the veriest 
soothing syrup upon the tongue of a crying 
child. The Hague Conference showed the 
Powers in agreement to recognize the right 
of any nation to offer its services to coun- 
tries at war with one another for the pur- 
pose of mediation. Indeed ! And when did 
the soft hand of appeal ever put forth its 
tender palm to be more harshly stung in 
the murk and treachery of black strife? 

A few years ago some scholars cast their 
glances far into the dim future and dis- 
turbed us with their matter-of-fact state- 
ments of unending wrath; they took it as 
a matter of course; they eyed the coming 
storm and said it was inevitable. Not this 

34 



Is War to be Abolished? 

particular cataclysm now sweeping over 
Europe, but the incurable warring spirit of 
man. In his Western Civilization Kidd told 
us some years ago that the era in which 
we have been living for the period we call 
the long stretch from Greece to the present 
age was not yet rounded out, and that in 
it we should see the same principles of his- 
tory at work which have been operating 
in the past. It is to all outward appearance 
the same changing conflict of peoples; the 
same rise and fall of nationalities ; and ever, 
beneath the surface of all the events of 
history, the same rule of force as in the past. 
Some did not accept his word, and dis- 
trusted his prevision. But so far as now 
appears he was correct. 

About the same time Professor C. H. 
Pearson wrote his rather pessimistic Na- 
tional Life and Character, and to the opti- 
mistic thinker his somber forecast was unac- 
ceptable. For instance, he affirmed that 

35 



Missions Versus Militarism 

"even if a general reduction of armaments 
were agreed to, it is doubtful if it would 
much alter the equilibrium among the 
great powers of Europe. It seems, there- 
fore, as if the utility of armies was to en- 
dure." And again : "It has been a part of 
the argument of these pages to show that 
the maintenance of large armies easily 
mobilized is as much a necessity now as it 
has been in past times. . . . Universal 
conscription will have become the rule, and 
military education up to a certain point, 
will be a part of the stock-in-trade with 
which every citizen is equipped when he 
enters life." Pearson sums it up thus: "It 
seems not unreasonable to suppose that a 
warlike spirit is as inseparable from human 
nature as the love of money or the sexual 
impulse, and that like these it may have its 
uses, though its excess is lamentable." 

That such words were written about the 
time that the brilliant phrasemaking pessi- 

36 



Is War to be Abolished? 

mist Nietzsche was spending his last years 
in an insane asylum is significant enough 
to set us thinking anew. Continuous war 
and the Superman are of like color in the 
strange and forbidding tapestry of ancient 
weaving. Were men never to sunder them ? 
What a chill grips the heart of the believer 
as he reads Nietzsche's characterization of 
our Faith! — "The great European narcotic 
of Christianity" — and this he ties up with 
the present order of things, and accounts for 
the hope of the serf, the dream of the demo- 
crat, the slow achievements of the man at 
the bottom, all of them by their dependence 
upon what is offered by the religion of 
Jesus. "After all, what is this that 'HE' ex- 
tends to man ? Mere contemptible consider- 
ation for the inferior, mere lack of assertion 
in the natural superior. Softness is ruin 
for all abiding progress, the progress in 
which, while God may be the ruler in the 
creeds of the churches, in practice there is 

37 



Missions Versus Militarism 

no God, for the hoarse whisper shrills 
through the heavens: 'Be hard, O my 
brethren, for we are emancipated. The 
world belongs to us. We are the strongest, 
And if men do not give us these things, we 
take them. It is the materialistic interpre- 
tation of history.' " 

We turn with disgust from such a Moloch 
altar in the interpretation of history. It may 
be that men will say, "It has neither logic 
nor heart in it." Possibly. Yet theory can- 
not be very far from practice when we read 
in Bernhardi's pages his vision of a nation's 
"Superman." We can but acknowledge that 
in his sky "the red planet Mars" is the sole 
illuminant of the path which millions are 
now treading and shall be driven to press 
with obedient but unfeeling heel on the way 
to triumph. Practically, the Superman 
theory is still at work in the world con- 
founding the sympathies and balking the 
prayers of the "meek," to whom is com- 

38 



Is War to be Abolished? 

mitted the final sovereignty of the earth, by 
Him who gives history its real meaning 
and goal. 

What a dreary prospect for the antimili- 
tarists! Many who have concerned them- 
selves for the results of the war now raging 
where it was at home in the days of Xerxes, 
have been prophesying that the war will end 
in the destruction of "militarism." But 
against this is the word uttered of late by 
a great Spanish scientist, Ramon y Cajal, 
for when he was pressed for his judgment 
upon the outcome of the vast conflict, he said 
that neither side would win a complete vic- 
tory; but that the loser would immediately 
begin preparations for vengeance. This is 
to say that the bad war will pour its poison 
into the veins of a worse war. The goal 
must be universal conscription. 

Logically, this means we are on the road 
to the suicide of humanity, unless by some 
mighty exercise of love in His disciples the 

39 



Missions Versus Militarism 

Man on the Cross shall be able to prove 
the victor. 

Or, else, the best that war leaves us, is 
that it cannot entirely eliminate heroes. 

May we not lighten our eyes with some 
bright rays from the very fields of blood 
themselves? For if we cannot, if our 
brothers who seek the death of one another 
are not exhibiting some qualities of human- 
ity, some tenderness, some desire, when not 
under the commands of their superiors, to 
help as well as to hurt their fellows, we may 
as well give up all argument and all prayers, 
and all hope of the millennium. Yet what a 
place to go to for signs of gentleness and 
brotherly interest! Not a few illustrations 
of what we are seeking have come to us, 
and should be graven in deepest memory. 
On Christmas Day, 1914, at the request of 
the pope, hostilities ceased on the right wing 
of the opposing armies in France. The sol- 
diers became so friendly that the next day 

40 



Is War to be Abolished? 

it was found necessary to move the troops, 
as the men did not wish to fire at each other. 

A story of even more intimate character 
has reached us from the front. A German 
soldier with his arm shot off and his remain- 
ing arm minus its fingers, was asked how 
he managed to get away without bleeding 
to death. He replied that his life was saved 
by a Frenchman, who had been shot through 
his body, and who, though dying, took off 
the necktie he was wearing, and bound it 
around the wrist of the German, at the same 
time telling him to put on his coat as he, 
the Frenchman, would not be in need of it 
longer, and that some one would probably 
carry him, the German, off the field in time 
to save his life ; the dying hero saying, with 
failing breath, that there would be no war 
in heaven. The German added : "If I go to 
heaven, that Frenchman is the first man I 
want to meet." 

A French officer after a fight in the 

41 



Missions Versus Militarism 

trenches noticed a German boy, probably 
fifteen years old, turning over and over near 
the French trench. He had evidently been 
left for dead and had lain there all night. 
Lifting him up in his arms, the officer car- 
ried him across to the opposing line. A 
German officer received the lad, took off his 
own iron cross and placed it upon the neck 
of the boy's savior, and told him to go back 
in safety. 

Another feature must not escape us. We 
are saying all that is possible for war. 
Death is not so terrible as if it were rare. 
George Meredith not long before his death 
bewailed "the degeneracy of the modern 
Englishmen on the ground that he was 
growing afraid of death and wounds." In 
the light of this word, assuming it to be a 
true word, what matters it if the choicest 
youth of England, France, Germany, and 
Russia take Death by the hand as if he 
were an old friend? What men have been 

42 



Is War to be Abolished? 

doing by day and by night unheralded in 
the awful trenches of Flanders and Poland, 
each fresh recruit declares himself ready, 
even anxious to attempt anew. 

There is a contagion of courage as well 
as of disease. Faith catches fire from faith 
as well as fear from fear. The average man 
finds himself unable to resist the torrent 
of valor, and self-denial, and self-sacrifice. 
Finally it is discovered that to fight the flood 
is harder than to float with it. "Tributaries 
of quiet and indolent lives unite themselves 
gradually into an irresistible torrent of hero- 
ism." This renewal of passionate faith in 
one's country and flag is sure to blaze with 
shining attractiveness in the Church when 
its deepening spirituality shall expend itself 
in a nobler vision and resistless efforts to 
secure men as volunteers for the Great Cap- 
tain. It is possible that the desperation of 
war may be able to teach the Church the 
glory of a forgotten heroism. 

43 



Missions Versus Militarism 

What war can do in its summons for 
transforming drudges into daredevils the 
clarion of the cross ought to be qualified to 
do, in that it crowds to the front men and 
women whose souls burn with the passion 
for victory, not that of wounds and suffer- 
ing and death, but rather the victory of 
peace and good will and loving-kindness. If 
only the vision of the army of the Great 
Captain catches the imagination of the 
Church, with HIS vast and constructive 
program for humanizing mankind, all will 
go well enough. 

For the present the two mightiest forces 
on earth will contend, each with its appro- 
priate armaments, for the triumphs for 
which it was originated. 

Is it not possible to evoke out of the dark 
clouds of the war some cheer and heroic 
spirit for the cause of missions ? A deeper 
probing into the existing evils which ac- 
company war will stir faith to a wider 

44 



Is War to be Abolished? 

horizon and inflame the soul to sterner 
struggle, all in the name of Christ Jesus. 
Has the Church been losing its grip and 
shirking the challenge of the heroic? The 
call of the missionary is a high one. Let 
the Church cast about for rebuttal of the 
fling that she is no more the heroic institu- 
tion she once was, and she will find it in 
the foreign field. And now that even mis- 
sions in certain quarters may have been 
catching the infection of the "easy way," 
they will take advantage of the present 
opportunity to increase devotion and to 
show to the world that the "far-flung battle 
line" of Christianity shall never suffer con- 
traction. 

Does one think it odd that the missionary 
should be moved to renewed heroism by the 
heroism of the soldier. Both are men, and 
are alike moved by human fevers. The one 
is aroused by noble scorn of peril on the fir- 
ing line. The other is quickened to action 

45 



Missions Versus Militarism 

by divine fire. Both are agreed in defy- 
ing death. Exile, destitution, death among 
strange peoples, the martyr's epitaph, the 
heavy strain upon faith, long years of unre- 
warded toil — these and more fill up the mea- 
sure of lives which illustrate the love, the 
courage, the boundless consecration of the 
missionary. While the soldier is making his 
expensive contributions to the deliverance 
of this age from the fear of hardship and 
horrors, it is possible for the missionary to 
fire his torch afresh at sight of what patriots 
are doing the world around. It may well be 
reckoned an astounding anomaly, yet his- 
tory repeats the story, that of two men in 
utterly unlike duties, each making gain from 
the other's valor. Peace makes out of the 
lesson of war which is death unto death the 
everlasting lesson of life unto life. The les- 
son is not new. Yet it has never been so 
impressively urged upon the soldiers of the 
cross as now. 

4 6 



Ill 

THE ROLE OF THE PROPHET 

L,ET us take our share in the chance of 
mistaken predictions. We must, for we are 
but men. The immediate future may yield 
its secrets to us, but we are blind to the 
long age ahead, save in a general fashion. 
In its progress Christianity has been record- 
ing certain phenomena and also predicting 
them. Not only saints, but soldiers and 
statesmen have claimed to be able to divine 
coming days. But events have too often 
given the lie to prophecy. 

Napoleon announced that Europe would 
soon become Cossack, and that Wellington 
would establish himself as despot in Eng- 
land because he was too powerful to remain 
a subject. Burke said that France would 

47 



Missions Versus Militarism 

shortly be divided like Poland. Lord Sel- 
burne declared that if independence were 
granted to the United States, "the sun of 
England will set, and her glory will be for- 
ever eclipsed." 

On the other hand, men not statesmen 
have joined the ranks of the prophets and 
made rational predictions. Tocqueville, 
thirty years before the Civil War in the 
United States, said that the South would 
attempt secession. Heine affirmed that 
France had more to fear from a free and 
United Germany than the Holy Alliance and 
all Cossacks united. 

It is needless to recite in any fullness 
words of good or of bad prophets. For 
even those who would persuade us that they 
see the most distant horizon confess their 
ignorance of the paths thitherward. As for 
bad prophets, they have no sure knowledge 
either of the end or the path. 

How painfully and slowly we creep on 

4 8 



The Role of the Prophet 

to our goal is felt in each return of disaj> 
pointment after happy dreams. For in^- 
stance, in his World the Subject of Redemp- 
tion, which Canon Fremantle delivered in 
the Bampton course of lectures at Oxford 
in 1883, the distinguished speaker took in 
vision the widening powers of the universal 
Church as set forth in sketch at least by 
means of diplomacy, which he declared to 
be the rudiments of the vast organization 
moving on to universalism in the days to 
come, thereby bridging the gaps between 
nations. This vision has been severely 
assaulted. National jealousy, dynastic am- 
bition, military efficiency, commercial suc- 
cesses, show small regard for the ideals 
of noncombatants. Fremantle looked for- 
ward to the nearby day when arbitration 
as demanded by the Paris and Berlin 
treaties should always take place before 
resort is had to war. Then, too, he adds, 
that the democratic tendency of modern so- 

49 



Missions Versus Militarism 

cieties must make the causes of war progres- 
sively fewer, and the burden of conscription 
which keeps nations armed to the teeth 
must cause peoples in whose hands is the 
power to shrink from the hard military 
regime, so that some method may be devised 
by which an international tribunal shall put 
an end to the present international anarchy. 
No doubt a bright prospect. Not long after 
came the Hague Conference. With what 
result ? To name it is to confess a shameful 
outcome. 

What timid voices are these by which 
men seek to arrest and then to direct the 
new day, or even to suggest the dominant 
forces which shall determine its character! 
As if to approve this sentiment, let me quote 
further from Fremantle: "The two great 
objects of the universal Church are, as has 
been pointed out, first, to insure peace and 
bind together the European family of na- 
tions, and, secondly, to act by a missionary 

So 



The Role of the Prophet 

impulse upon the weaker nations, begin- 
ning with those now held under the power 
of the Turks." His next sentence evokes a 
bitter groan of almost cynical surprise as 
the reader lifts his eyes from the page of 
futile prophecy and gazes upon the crimson 
of the thousand-mile battle line of Europe : 
"In the first of these two departments we 
may expect that France and Germany 
should lead the way, in the second our own 
country." What a comment upon bright 
human hopes ! 

Others, perhaps more profound students 
of economic forces, speak to us. In his 
famous Future of War the youthful peddler 
of Warsaw, later the graduate of a German 
university, then the leading banker of the 
Polish capital, Jean de Bloch, making his 
appeal solely to the business activities of 
men, not to the instincts of humanity, in his 
tremendous arraignment not only of war, 
but also of the "armed peace" under which 

Si 



Missions Versus Militarism 

Europe was groaning, argues most convinc- 
ingly of what ? 

How effectively he proved that such a 
"peace" was the height of stupidity! How 
he proved that costly artillery and cavalry 
were becoming a thing of the past! How 
well he reckoned with the future, and how 
ill, let the trenches of France and Poland, 
of which he did not dream, and the flying 
terrors overhead, which two brothers of 
Dayton, Ohio, were soon to loose into the 
invisible mists of the sky, and the more 
awful submarine, another gift of America 
to the world — three new instruments of war 
— reveal to mankind. 

A bit later the brilliant Italian, Ferrero, 
in his Militarism, analyzes the indications of 
what he called the "decadent militarism" in 
Europe. Germany he calls a less "bellicose" 
nation than France. The independent bour- 
geoise of England and Germany is stronger, 
and hence checks the tendency to militarism, 

52 



The Role of the Prophet 

which check is lacking in France and Italy. 
In discussing the new phase tending to peace 
after the war between France and Germany 
in 1870, Ferrero says that Napoleonism was 
dead; that Europe was enjoying an equi- 
librium which would not be disturbed and 
would improve in the course of time. 
"Though Europe may never have been so 
heavily armed as it has been since 1870, 
desire and opportunity to make use of these 
weapons have never been so reduced. Now 
arms are the body of militarism, while the 
desire to resort to them is its soul." 

Ferrero closes his volume thus: "At the 
present moment the Christian world has 
before it, if its wisdom is not less than its 
fortune, a long respite of peace." "Its wis- 
dom"? Is this all that our time lacks? 

And men still make predictions while the 
future draws away from them. Among the 
latest is one by the great pacifist, Dr. David 
Starr Jordan, of California, in a contribu- 

53 



Missions Versus Militarism 

tion to the Scientific Monthly. Would that 
he knew the day after to-morrow! He 
brings a new indictment against militarism 
by tracing the history of national debts, 
showing that they are virtually all war 
debts. "If it were not for war, no nation 
on earth need ever have borrowed a dollar." 
Before the present war began, the nations of 
Europe were already up to their ears in 
debt, due to the cost of "preparedness." 
This total national bonded indebtedness 
would equal $30,000,000,000, nearly three 
times all the gold and silver in the world. 
He quotes the secretary of the Liverpool 
Stock Exchange, who estimates that the 
cash cost of the present war up to August 
I, 191 5, was not less than $17,000,000,000, 
while the losses will push the grand total 
up to $46,000,000,000, which would pay all 
the national world debts at the time the 
war broke out. 

Yet this does not halt the mad rush. Is 

54 



The Role of the Prophet 

war, then, a perennial necessity ? So it has 
been said. Treitzschke emphasized the per- 
ennial character of war. He but echoed 
thinkers before him, like Hegel, who de- 
clared that there is no power to arbitrate 
between states ; hence the necessity of appeal 
to arms. This is to say that no progress has 
been made since the days of Dante, who 
dreamed the coming of a universal empire. 

However, as it has been made clear that 
universal empire seems impossible, and even 
impending war makes order impossible, an- 
other alternative is urgently called for. Six 
hundred years ago the ex-soldier turned 
missionary, Raymond Lull, achieved the 
crown of martyrdom when stoned to death 
in Africa. The glowing enthusiasm with 
which knights and commoners, children 
even, had swarmed to the East against the 
Moslem power in order to recover the holy 
sepulcher by means of the sword has given 
an imperishable title to an era of history — 

55 



Missions Versus Militarism 

the crusades. But Lull, with a more pro- 
found faith in the missionary school than in 
the arms of the crusaders, sought the coun- 
tenance of the pope, and expressed his con- 
fidence in another weapon, another form of 
drill, another motive: "I see many knights 
going to the Holy Land in the expectation 
of conquering by force of arms, but instead 
of accomplishing their object they are in the 
end all swept off themselves. Therefore it 
is my belief that the conquest of the Holy 
Land should be attempted in no other way 
than as Thou [Christ] and Thy apostles 
undertook to accomplish it — by love, by 
prayer, by tears, and the offering up of our 
own lives." 



56 



IV 



MISSIONS, THE ONLY ALTER- 
NATIVE 

In the thick of the struggle we get light. 
Mr. A. B. Earquhar, when visiting in 
Constantinople and trying to get out of the 
war zone, had a highly interesting conversa- 
tion with the American ambassador, Mr. 
Morgenthau, while sailing on the Bosphorus 
in his longboat. The ambassador said that 
Jesus had been the greatest influence for 
good of any character who had ever lived, 
and agreed with his guest that the only pos- 
sible means of doing away with war was to 
follow his teachings. Entirely natural is the 
query : Then, if Jesus has been in the world 
for two millenniums, so omnipotent and 
beneficent an energy through his followers, 
why are we now so hard bestead, so help- 
less, so puzzled? 

57 



Missions Versus Militarism 

Robert E. Speer holds the rudder in firm 
grip when he says : "We allow ourselves to 
be too easily intimidated by the noise of 
contemporary history. . . . We refuse 
to be browbeaten by the cry that 'the world 
is falling apart.' " He shows that no single 
new principle is disclosed in this strife. 
"Not a single claim of Christ has been 
jostled. Christianity has not failed. It has 
not even been tried." J. R. Mott adds his 
convictions touching the faith of the stu- 
dent body of America in 1915 : "No preced- 
ing academic year has been ushered in with 
such responsiveness to the requirements of 
Christ." He names the unparalleled tri- 
umphs of Christ in the difficult student fields 
of the Far Hast during the opening months 
of conflict, when the shocking appeal to war 
found the whole Christian world was en- 
deavoring to right itself. 

That temporary misfortune has attended 
some sections of the field of missions can- 

58 



Missions, the Only Alternative 

not be doubted, yet the wonder is that more 
damage has not resulted from the carnage 
and wreck of contending armies. To refer 
to concrete instances. Of all mission fields 
we should be led to expect the pessimistic 
note in any account given by a German of 
the work under the control of Germans. 
Yet the outlook is not entirely one of gloom. 
Losses and gains offset one another. Ger- 
man missions have suffered various for- 
tunes in German and non-German colonies. 
Some have been seriously injured, others 
generally spared. Indeed, in China and 
Japan they have been unmolested, and even 
enjoy civil protection, while on the Gold 
Coast they are allowed to work in practical 
freedom. 

Next to the German, the French missions 
have suffered most from the war, principally 
through the extension of mobilization even 
to the mission priests. Many missions have 
been banished from Turkey. Proportion- 

59 , 



Missions Versus Militarism 

ally the English and American missions, 
which with diminishing exceptions are Pro- 
testant, have felt least the reaction of the 
world war. Dr. Schmidlin calls attention 
to a significant possibility in the readjust- 
ment of missionary affairs, at least during 
the continuance of the war, namely, from a 
national point of view to the advantage of 
the Anglo-Saxon missions; from a confes- 
sional, to the advantage of Protestantism. 

Nevertheless, it is not to be doubted that 
the common testing has been purifying 
Christianity, and turning it to that which is 
everlasting, and thus to its missionary task. 
He finds in the mission fields some of the 
fruits of true brotherly spirit even while 
the war rages; for while in some quarters 
complaints have arisen from the usurpation 
by Catholics of the places occupied by Pro- 
testants, and of the places formerly held by 
Catholics now occupied by Protestants — all 
of which is in opposition to missionary com- 

60 



Missions, the Only Alternative 

ity — "yet here and there, however, inter- 
confessional help, and especially a common 
need, has brought Catholic and Protestant 
congregations together, not merely in mate- 
rial defense and assistance, but in a com- 
munity of spiritual devotions and interests 
against the common foe. . . . Surmount- 
ing all barriers of dogma and church polity, 
men have learned to love and cherish one an- 
other — yes, even to recognize that, in spite 
of all that separates us, there is also much 
that binds us together. May this lesson of 
the war be taken to heart, and may it in- 
augurate a new era when in Christian 
thought and feeling men may the better 
bear with and understand one another." 

The Lutheran Year Book states that out 
of a total of 2,300 German missionaries not 
more than 500 are now (December, 191 5) 
at work on their fields, and some depend for 
food and shelter upon American missionary 
societies other than Lutheran. 

61 



Missions Versus Militarism 

In Japan, the first year of the late evangel- 
istic campaign reached its close at a notable 
banquet given on April 13, 191 5, by the 
Tokyo Committee, at which over two hun- 
dred and fifty high officials and prominent 
citizens were present. Count Okuma was 
the principal guest and said: "For social 
reform in its various branches modern 
Japan is particularly indebted to the joint 
efforts of foreign missions and Japanese 
Christians. Above all, the eternal woman 
problem has been solved satisfactorily, once 
for all, after Indian philosophy and Chinese 
ethics had struggled in vain for three hun- 
dred years to find a right place in society 
for woman." In the face of this command- 
ing tribute from the great Japanese states- 
man, how futile are all the clumsy com- 
plaints of selfish men who have gone to the 
Orient only that they might exploit the 
yellow and brown races ! 

We must remind ourselves that Japan 

62 



Missions, the Only Alternative 

gave cold welcome to its first Protestant 
missionary in 1859, and now it has 857 
organized churches with a membership of 
102,000. For some years after the arrival of 
missionaries the Bible was a prohibited book ; 
to-day the best seller in Japan is the Bible. 

Nor has war checked the holy tide in 
Korea. The first convert was baptized in 
1886. The ingathering up to the present 
year shows no sign of diminishing. One of 
the six missions in Korea, in which there 
was not a Christian a few years ago, has now 
over 100,000 members, and for thirteen 
years the average net increase has been 
thirty-eight per cent. 

The Revolution in China gives rank to the 
year of 191 1 equal to that of 1688 in Eng- 
land, or that of 1776 in America, or that of 
1789 in France. Whatever be the final out- 
come of the double dealing of Yuan Shi-Kai, 
whether it be republic or monarchy, in the 
field of religion there will be freedom, and 

63 



Missions Versus Militarism 

its index finger will steadily continue to 
point to a day for which the fathers prayed, 
yet without faith sufficient to grasp the con- 
spicuous triumph of this pregnant era. 

It was a most striking prophecy in which 
Professor Reinsch, now the United States 
minister to China, pictured a few years ago 
the dawn of a new day: "If a careful con- 
sideration of the powers engaged in the 
Chinese struggle, their policies and tend- 
encies, is of the greatest necessity, it is not 
less a study of the most absorbing interest, 
for a drama is about to be enacted the like 
of which the world has never seen. It 
dwarfs the conquests of Alexander. Com- 
pared with this titanic contest the exploits 
of Napoleon seem a passing diversion, and 
previous meetings between Orient and Occi- 
dent seem the merest skirmishes." 

China lifts its hoary head among the 
world powers with confidence that its future 
will add not shame but honor to its age- 

6 4 



Missions, the Only Alternative 

long history. The contempt with which the 
scholars and rulers of the great empire 
scanned the coming of the Christian Church 
is giving way to the distinction with which 
the government has of late shown sym- 
pathetic interest in the program of the for- 
eigner with his new evangel. No one who 
has heard the story of China as Bishop J. W. 
Bashford has told it in public, and much 
more so, no one who has been privileged to 
hear his intimate and almost confidential 
account of the latest movings of the free 
spirit in this largest homogeneous popula- 
tion of the globe, in which matters social, 
religious, and political are puzzlingly inter- 
mingled, can ever shake himself loose from 
the conviction that the use of the figure, 
geometrical ratio, is too slender a state- 
ment of the progress and prospects of this 
quarter of the world. 

At the risk of overemphasis, attention 
must be turned to India and its "mass move- 

65 



Missions Versus Militarism 

ment." The surprise with which we heard 
the news of vast populations coming for 
baptism and admission into membership in 
the Church a while ago gains upon itself 
with every new statement of the bewildering 
facts. In the ten years in which the last 
census has been taken the growth of Protes- 
tantism has outrun that of the Roman Cath- 
olics. The Baptists have leaped from 217,- 
000 to 332,000 and are now slightly less 
than the Anglicans. The Congregational- 
ists, the Presbyterians, the Methodists have 
made astounding progress. If anyone is 
disposed to claim that the Christian Church 
is not holding its own when compared with 
the population or the native faiths, let him 
consider the following, taken from the cen- 
sus : during the decade population increased 
6.4 per cent; the Hindus, 5 per cent; Mo- 
hammedans, 6 per cent; Buddhists, 13 per 
cent; Christians, 33 per cent; in the Pun- 
jab the Christian increase was 446 per cent. 

66 



Missions, the Only Alternative 

Mass Movements have been not unknown 
heretofore. In South India various uplifts 
of a wholesale sort occurred among the Ro- 
man Catholic and Danish missions. In the 
forties among the Anglicans, and in the 
fifties among the Gossner missions ; and in 
the seventies among the Telugus of South 
India under the direction of the Baptists 
great evangelical upheavals swept vast popu- 
lations into the Kingdom. About 1890 the 
stirrings of religion among the Sweepers 
and Chamars in the United Provinces of 
North India, beginning among the Method- 
ists spread to the Punjab and caught the 
Presbyterians in its momentum, then going 
to the South and East reached the Karens 
in Burma under the American Baptists. 

This mass movement in India is the very 
finger of God pointing out the path of duty 
to the American churches. John R. Mott's 
words are a flaming text upon the first page 
of the first issue of the magazine put out 

67 



Missions Versus Militarism 

in behalf of this glorious emergency in 
which millions are facing the cross of 
Christ: "The vast continent of Asia with its 
multitudinous population is in the midst of 
stupendous changes — changes political, edu- 
cational, economic, social, and religious. 
The situation thus presented to the Chris- 
tian Church is unprecedented in opportunity, 
in danger, and in urgency. This is the great- 
est single fact to be pressed upon the mind 
and conscience and will of Christendom." 

When converts began to knock for ad- 
mission to the Church, not as individuals, 
nor as families, but in groups, and within 
certain lower caste lines, even some Chris- 
tians were skeptical. But that did not stop 
the wave. Beyond the circle of the converts 
now stand hundreds and thousands and tens 
of thousands of "inquirers." The Era of 
June, 191 5, a periodical given especially to 
this movement, says: "Within the past 
twelve months, with our available means in 

68 



Missions, the Only Alternative 

men and money, we have instructed and 
baptized just about 40,000 of these earnest 
seekers after Christ But a recent letter of 
inquiry addressed to our district superin- 
tendents reveals the tremendously startling 
fact that in addition to those taught and bap- 
tized in the Christian faith, there still stand 
at the doors of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church over 150,000 inquirers, against 
whom the doors are shut for lack of trained 
workers." 

"Waiting lists" are a most meaningful 
sign of power in mission fields; at once 
proof of deep hunger on the part of the 
peoples who yearn for the truth and of 
zeal on the part of the Church which 
strains nerve and taxes wisdom to meet the 
future of this growing spiritual famine. In 
Africa, at Elat, on the equatorial west Coast, 
is a flourishing Presbyterian mission church 
with a waiting list of 15,000. To get into 
the Church is not an easy matter. It re- 

69 



Missions Versus Militarism 

quires in this unknown place a probation 
of at least two years with weekly instruc- 
tion. The African convert is required to 
do three things : he must give up his fetish, 
he must settle his palavers; cease his immo- 
rality, give up his superfluous wives, and 
pay his debts ; and two years before he is 
received into the Church he must take a 
package of envelopes and become a weekly 
contributor. The homeland has no such 
discipline for its membership; probably 
ought not to establish it, for it would fail of 
its purpose. But in Elat it works. It does 
not drive away converts. In 1914 there 
were 7.500 persons who confessed Christ, 
and 5.000 of them were led to faith in him 
by native workers. 

If any have to say that the vast majority 
of such gains from idolatry and supersti- 
tion are taken from the lower classes of 
heathen populations, he is well answered 
both from the masses of the peoples of the 

70 



Missions, the Only Alternative 

Roman empire at the start, and from a 
proper conception of the population ques- 
tion, for this is at the bottom of world move- 
ments — in the economic, in the commercial, 
in the educational, as well as in the religious 
world. A visitor to India toured the north- 
west and studied the whole problem. In- 
stead of ridiculing the vast ingatherings of 
the poor, he said : "I believe that you in the 
mass movement in India have begun at the 
right place. Undermine and you will get 
the whole hill" 

This is it in a word: In the thick of the 
fight, the fiercest of time, this note sounds 
on and on and on, that of all the forces 
which have ever striven for permanence and 
sought for supremacy, none other has so 
moving, so potent an energy with which to 
ofifset the destructive ability of war as the 
cause of missions. If it has seemed in the 
process of statement that we have said, in 
short, "The more war, the more missions," 

7 1 



Missions Versus Militarism 

the great underlying fact remains, that the 
firmer faith in the ultimate supremacy of 
missions over that of militarism must com- 
mand the mind and heart of the Christian 
Church. 

The older form of imperialism, the sol- 
dier's conception and proud dream, so 
long efficient on earth, in which in regular 
order we behold the rude pike, the javelin, 
the long spear, the short sword, the battle- 
ax, the gun, the cannon playing their parts 
from Marathon to the Marne, these will not 
forever champion the cause of progress. A 
younger army with less of noise and spec- 
tacle and frightfulness is surely coming to 
the front. All his preparedness is for peace. 
What to the unbelieving were fruitless ex- 
pansion and vain toil are to him proofs of 
growing ability to organize society in terms 
of humanity and the interest of a mighty 
brotherhood. 

Both war and missions are emphasizing 
?2 



Missions, the Only Alternative 

the value of the common man. This is in- 
evitable. In this they have cooperation from 
the industrial world, perhaps the most influ- 
ential realm from which to seek or receive 
aid. The school furnishes its share of in- 
formation and inspiration. Commerce 
spreads the news of his increasing worth 
to the farthest shores. Whether the major 
note in the coming interpretation of history 
is to be militaristic or missionary, he, the 
average man, will have to be reckoned with. 
He is slowly rising to his own. 

The power which inspires Christian mis- 
sions is not dead even in the midst of strife. 
The "hate" which burned in the most not- 
able poetic production among all the com- 
batants at the outbreak of the war seems to 
have had its moderation in the semiapology 
of the author, and in the sermon of Pastor 
Lahusan in the leading pulpit of Berlin, 
made famous by Schleiermacher. In this 
sermon, which ran to fifty thousand copies 

73 



Missions Versus Militarism 

in the first edition, Dr. Lahusan voices the 
religious reaction against hatred of Eng- 
land, and says : "We can only win if God is 
on our side. Hatred looks like something 
strange and powerful; in reality it is not 
strength but a weakness. . . . We regard 
our enemies only as human creatures, flesh 
of our flesh and bone of our bone, as chil- 
dren of the Father, as those for whom 
Christ died as he did for us." So out of the 
mouth of the lion honey is extracted. If 
religion can thus express the deeper under- 
current of brotherhood in the midst of 
wrathful contention, how much more will 
the love of God find supreme expression on 
the part of those commissioned to reach to 
the ends of the earth with their evangel in 
times of quiet. One must feel that in the 
midst of murderous hate the love that pro- 
claims no barrier of race, or tongue, or creed, 
or flag holds the secret of ultimate victory 
when unembarrassed by war. 

74 



V 

CRISIS FOR AMERICA 

America stands now in a crisis in which 
all her wisdom, patriotism, capacity for re- 
form, democratic instincts, inventive ability, 
new obligations with neighbors for trade, for 
education, for evangelization — in sum, all 
the vast complex by which the world has 
come to distinguish her from Europe — must 
be emphasized afresh, not to enmesh her in 
quarrels foreign to her life and consistent 
future, but to give her that eminence which 
now as never before belongs to her, the 
Hope of the World. Let her free herself 
from every form of selfishness, private, pub- 
lic, political, which may interfere with her 
greatest usefulness while the Old World 
painfully emerges from an awful sickness, 

75 



Missions Versus Militarism 

and turns in her ache to some source of 
relief. 

Now the high test of her vaunted Democ- 
racy is finally set before her in the shape 
of efficiency. Old World ideals of rule 
challenge her fond hopes of teaching their 
duties to all men, on the ground that a few 
men in secret council can determine a na- 
tion's destiny better than when men come 
to know and value their governmental duties 
in representative capacity. This is the day 
of the supreme trial of our political creed. 
If we are found wanting in business meth- 
ods, in caring for the common worker; if 
the lack of any more public land, and the 
heterogeneous qualities of our ill-governed 
cities are laying too sore a burden upon our 
ability to think the way out; if we stand 
convicted before men as at once the richest 
and the most wasteful people on the globe, 
and shall be compelled to choose between 
better government and less of share in rule 

7 6 



Crisis for America 

offered to the millions, what then is our 
future? Is the only alternative a return to 
the Old World ideal of monarchic control 
along with efficiency, or the development 
of the American ideal of freedom along 
with waste — and must we choose? Is 
Democracy, with its ramshackle methods, 
able to stand examination before the ideal of 
efficiency, or are there values cousin to free- 
dom and not tied up with a controlling 
efficiency which we can afford to cling to? 
In a word, what shall be the commanding, 
the dominant note in our further progress? 
One says: "War has taught us the pro- 
foundest meaning of perfect efficiency, its 
utmost reaches, no matter which side in 
Europe wins out. Let us learn that much of 
the lesson. So far safe we shall be." What 
this will mean for America, what brighter 
day, what unknown load with which to 
march down into an unfree future, was set 
forth at the Lake Mohonk Conference in 

77 



Missions Versus Militarism 

I 9 I 5 by President Hibben, of Princeton: 
"What is militarism? It is the madness of 
a nation. Militarism is not created by the 
army, but the nature and scope of the army 
is determined by the policy of the nation. 
Militarism is essentially a theory of the 
state. Where militarism exists the govern- 
ment is a part of the army, instead of the 
army being a part of the government. With 
militarism the idea of war dominates even 
the pursuits of peace ; war becomes a 
public policy for the expansion of the 
country's territory and the development of 
its resources. Militarism is the internal con- 
trol of the whole machinery of government 
in times of peace as well as in times of war. 
It means a military caste and all the pomp 
and circumstance of insolent power which 
thinks imperially and prosecutes the policies 
of an aggressive world domination. Its 
ethic is the maxim that the end justifies the 
means; its religion is the idea of a tribal 

78 



Crisis for America 

God of battles whose favor is propitiated 
by the blood of its sons, sacrificed on the 
high altar of a national glory and fame ; its 
inspiration, the love of conquest, the greed 
of power, and the passion of hate." Pass 
the word along, preserve the American ideal, 
at home, abroad. 

Missionary leaders in China tell us that 
what they feared has not come to pass — a 
serious loss of prestige in the ranks of our 
workers and in the faith in Christianity 
because of the dreadful enmities in the 
Western world among professed followers 
of Christ. The Chinese reason correctly 
that what is now being enacted is due not 
to the presence, but the absence of a ruling 
Christian spirit among Europeans. Thus 
our ideal is safe among our foreign work- 
ers. 

The question still faces us. Is our ideal 
safe on home ground? Is the traditional 
America as a peaceful nation likely to suffer 

79 



Missions Versus Militarism 

from the overwhelming pressure which 
every day seems to increase from our invol- 
untary as well as our voluntary participation 
in the Old World diplomacy, commerce, 
military methods, and general international 
confusion? It looks as if we are losing, 
and what Lord Morley called "the wreck 
of the ideals of my generation" had fallen 
to us in this cataclysm of horrors. Losses 
of money and of lives are not comparable 
to losses of ideals of faith in what lifts a 
nation up, and of loyalty to those ideals. 
Why should not our lawmakers and official 
leaders bend their energies to the solution 
of the question of a peaceful increase of the 
efficiency of a democratic state and continue 
to have faith in the peculiarity of our type 
of governmental control, rather than to suc- 
cumb to the seduction of militarism ? Why 
turn eye and step backward? 

With all its weaknesses, its failures, its 
rawness, its narrowness, America is still the 

80 



Crisis for America 

giant exponent of an experiment in govern- 
ment "of, by, and for the people." We have 
welcomed dreamers, have harbored intri- 
guers, have bred heroes, have offered hearts- 
ease for the oppressed and opportunity for 
genius. Titles are not free, but religion is. 
For the world's good or ill we must be 
reckoned with. What we think of war, of 
peace, of human brotherhood, it is worth 
while for the rest of mankind to discover. 

Have we any secret cure for so terrible a 
plague as now stalks through Europe from 
the Meuse to the Golden Horn? If so, in 
God's name let it be known. Christmas 
ships, and private deputations, and philan- 
thropic millions are eminently characteristic 
of our mingling of good will and benevolent 
energy. But we must look more earnestly 
and with more self-sacrificing sincerity to 
the significance of our claim to be the great 
democratic republic of all time. We have 
trait, and charm, and might. Our petition 

81 



Missions Versus Militarism 

should be now for more courage and wis- 
dom. A merely obvious program of armed 
peace is surely not what is demanded of us, 
just as other great nations, sinking deep in 
each other's blood, are weakening their grip 
upon the affection of their own masses as 
well as upon the confidence of the rest of 
mankind. Now is not the time for the 
United States to trail after the final stages 
of militarism ; but, rather, it is the hour for 
us to strike such a note of hope and wisdom 
as that men under all skies will turn to us 
for real leadership. The Future is dark 
enough. Let us not make it darker. 

The times when men were "food for 
powder," and the state was simply an ex- 
pression of the ambitions and fortunes of 
the chief, are certainly, though very slowly, 
passing away. This old phase has almost 
disappeared, giving way to the second phase 
in the evolution of society, namely, one in 
which the lower orders of men have been 

82 



Crisis for America 

entering into their share of respect, and in 
which the dignity of labor has become a 
positive asset. Not the least of the gains 
of labor is its stubborn inquiry as to its 
right of immunity from war. 

The first stage, the military one, has, 
especially within the last two centuries, been 
surrendering to the second stage, the indus- 
trial one. It is not that the first has 
passed away; far from it; nor has the 
second yet supplanted the first, for they 
overlap. Both "the sacredness of property 
and the divinity of kings" are in the field. 
Yet what Carlyle called the "brass collar 
day," the day when the king was fixed at 
the top and the serf fixed at the bottom— this 
epoch melts away gradually before the new 
light and heat of our times. 

What sociologists name the humanitarian 
age is about to supplant the second age, as 
that age made its gains upon the first age. 
When neither the power of the first shall 

83 



Missions Versus Militarism 

override the man at the bottom nor the 
wealth of the second shall seduce him, then 
may we have hope of the full blessing of 
the third stage now vigorously rising to a 
high place of power. 

We are the more hopeful of the coming 
of that good day when we contemplate the 
connection between the new spirit among 
men and the abiding emphasis of the mis- 
sionary upon the value of man as man. 
This is the crowning reenforcement of the 
original vision of "one blood" and one gos- 
pel seen most strikingly in the tremendous 
turning of the low-caste people of India to 
the hearty invitation of the Church. 

If we are to find a cure for the tendency 
in philosophy and imperialism, in social and 
commercial life, to serve in the interests of 
aristocracy rather than in those of democ- 
racy, we shall have to look elsewhere than 
to the ambitions of rulers, the competitions 
of princes of trade, or the vague dreams of 

8 4 



Crisis for America 

philosophers. For a century past the visions 
of Lincoln, and Marx, and Livingstone, and 
Mazzini, if we may class men together who 
are strangely dissimilar, have been with- 
stood by the programs of Renan, and Scho- 
penhauer, and Comte, and Nietzsche. To 
these latter the day ahead is to have the 
stamp of aristocratic illiberalism. The des- 
tiny of the race is not to be found in the 
happiness of the multitude, but in the dom- 
inance of the elite. So many assert. 

Even in the land of liberty, under whose 
sheltering roof-tree Jefferson held that "all 
men are created equal," men set forth upon 
the quest of such a type of government as 
would draw all men to it from sheer love 
of freedom, though often mistaken in their 
conception of what that might mean, even 
here we have witnessed something like 
"political fatalism," a mental attitude which 
is the outgrowth of the fascination of his- 
toric evolution. Men have been bitten by 

85 



Missions Versus Militarism 

the poison tooth of the notion that the 
United States was drawn into Oriental 
politics as if by destiny, and assumed vast 
responsibilities for which it was not pre- 
pared and for which many contended she 
had not been born. They claim that this 
indicates that the doctrine that all men are 
created equal has been overstated and over- 
exalted. This we must watch. 

In Pan-Americanism we offer to the 
whole world an idea and a force for peace 
whose influence the multitude scarcely mea- 
sures. Honorable John Barrett, at the late 
Mohonk Conference, declared that, in his 
estimation, "the most remarkable fact affect- 
ing the western hemisphere which has been 
developed by the European war is the 
impetus which it has given to practical Pan- 
Americanism." He is seconded in this view 
by Dr. Naon, who spoke in the spring of 
191 5 at Harrisburg of American solidarity 
as a powerful example for peace to the rest 

86 



Crisis for America 

of the world : "The bearing of America can- 
not but be expectant and reconstructive, if, 
as I believe, there is still reason to trust the 
idea of human solidarity as the final end of 
social evolution." It may be that the end is 
not so far off as many contend if the rest 
of the world shall come to see with the eyes 
of two great nations of South America, 
Argentina and Chile, who have made out 
of molten cannon the towering statue of 
the Christ and set it on the summit of the 
Andes, determined in the future to settle 
their differences after his fashion, pledging 
themselves by the inscription at the base: 
"Sooner shall these mountains crumble to 
dust than shall Argentina and Chile go to 
war." 

It is worth more than a passing reflection 
to note the new place which America has 
of late years been gaining as a great peace- 
maker among the nations of the world, 
since we drew down our flag from Cuba in 

87 



Missions Versus Militarism 

19 12, after giving her release from middle- 
age mismanagement; and since we with- 
drew from the soil of China our soldiers 
after the internal upheaval of 1900 and gave 
back to her a part of the share which fell to 
the United States for the losses incident to 
the insurrection. 

Yet since our factories have been supply- 
ing Europeans with war munitions we are 
in danger of losing the good name of neutral 
which was once our boast. How easily 
the high place in the world's imagination 
towards which we were mounting may be 
lost none can say, but it is not a matter of 
congratulation that when we wore a worthy 
title, we should so soon exchange it for 
the meaner one of "mighty money-getter." 
With our white fields of cotton, our prairies 
yellow with wheat and corn, our resources 
in valuable metals, almost the despair of 
statistics, we stand forth among the peoples 
of the world able to voice the new note 

88 



Crisis for America 

of world peace, shaming the barbarous 
code with which the hard-breathing armies 
of Europe seem only of late to have emerged 
from the ages of stone and blood. 

The good opinion of the United States 
is not to be cast aside; none of the con- 
testants cares to appear as the cause of the 
mighty conflict, and in turn all of them 
endeavor to put the blame upon other 
shoulders. What we think of them matters 
in the moral universe. We become a sort 
of challenger of conduct, a court of con- 
science. The consequence of this is that we 
dare not assume a false attitude and must 
make a highly sincere effort to prove our- 
selves worthy of such distinction. 

It is worth while to call attention to a 
remarkable pamphlet first issued in the At- 
lantic Monthly by G. Lowes Dickinson, an 
Englishman, entitled War and the Way 
Out. With intense sincerity he deals with 
the causes of strife. He contends that if 

8 9 



Missions Versus Militarism 

the proper conception of the whole case is 
grasped, and the proper spirit is used by the 
people most concerned, the way out will not 
be so difficult to find, though it may not be 
found immediately upon the close of the 
war. Patience and fair mind will obtain 
what nothing else can hope for. 

This, like all other wars for many cen- 
turies in Europe, was brought about by gov- 
ernments, without the connivance and 
against the desires and the interests of the 
people. What he calls the "governmental 
theory" is the dominating influence in 
politics and should shoulder the responsi- 
bilities for international strife. According 
to this, states are natural enemies; their 
politics are controlled, their destinies are 
directed by rulers, ministers, diplomatists, 
and military advisers, supported by journal- 
ists and publicists. The common people, 
who bear heavy burdens and endure intoler- 
able hardships and suffer death in greatest 
90 



Crisis for America 

numbers, have little to say either for war or 
its ending in treaty. 

The illusion that one nation cannot ex- 
pand in trade and colonial holdings without 
injuring another nation is severely punc- 
tured. No time is spent in condemning the 
past. All good men are urged to help to 
mold the future. This cannot be done 
"unless the plain men and women, workers 
with their hands and workers with their 
brains, in England and in Germany and in 
all countries, get together and say to the 
people who have led them into this catas- 
trophe, and who will lead them into such 
again and again: 'No more! No more! 
And never again. . . . You shall not 
make the peace as you have made the war. 
The Europe that shall come out of this war 
shall be our Europe. And it shall be one in 
which another European war shall be never 
possible.' " 

The scheme proposed for securing this 

91 



Missions Versus Militarism 

end is not chimerical — only given time for 
the ideas to get to work in men's minds. 
Let there be no thought of humiliating one 
another; let nations have their rights of 
choice of flag; let not reluctant peoples be 
compelled to adopt a foreign culture; let 
international authority, save for what has 
to do with internal police, have control of 
the unneeded armaments ; let disputes be 
settled by proper international judicial proc- 
ess. "A League of Europe is not Utopia. 
It is sound business." "Militarism must be 
destroyed, not only in Germany but every- 
where." 

One other sentence in this brave plan for 
world peace deserves quotation. Against 
technical and economic reasons for sup- 
pressing private armament firms it is said 
that "they are outweighed by the fact now 
sufficiently proved, that the private firms 
deliberately foment differences between na- 
tions in order to get orders for their goods. 
92 



Crisis for America 

An activity so monstrous ought to be de- 
stroyed, root and branch, at all and every 
cost." 

With such appeals of reason and con- 
science laid at our doors, the one great na- 
tion free from hurtful complications with 
nations at war, with every rational convic- 
tion that the contestants will be too battered 
for any immediate assault upon our shores, 
what do we but engage in the cultivation 
of the idea of war, and war is first an idea ; 
then in pushing swiftly our plans for "pre- 
paredness," which is only "armed peace" ; 
and, not satisfied with furnishing Europeans 
with hundreds of millions of munitions of 
war, we are set upon the continuance of the 
manufacture of munitions for our own use. 
In a word, we are planning to turn Bridge- 
port, Connecticut; Norfolk, Virginia; and 
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, into the Essens of 
America. God forbid ! To have been com- 
pelled to gaze upon awful conflict sickens 

93 



Missions Versus Militarism 

the soul ; to have been bitten by the tooth of 
poison of militarism is a thousandfold more 
deplorable. 

With the Spirit of Missions calling us 
"Forward!" how dare we in complacent 
indifference or feverish ambition lend our 
ears to the Spirit of Militarism? This cry 
is "Backward!" During the past two cen- 
turies terrific wars have encumbered the 
earth. Yet along with them the peoples of 
the earth have been drawn closer together 
by trade, colonial expansion, travel, a thou- 
sand forms of fraternization, vicarious con- 
tributions on the part of strong Christian 
peoples in the way of an immortal literature, 
a host of heroic souls and millions of dollars. 
Can it be that we are losing sight of the 
goal toward which our fathers in the days 
of their weakness trod heavily on? Again, 
God forbid! 



94 



VI 
THE PATIENCE OF FAITH 

Patience, and again patience, and again 
patience ! Christianity came down the ages 
hand in hand with social deformities, 
with the ugly, the diseased, and enslaved 
members of the social order, if what evoked 
the pity of saints, but what saints could not 
cure, could be styled part of any "social 
order." The laws of the Church were 
shaped in expectation of a better social con- 
dition; yet the goal kept vanishing far in 
the distant future, and men joined with their 
vague trust in the divine medicaments a 
somber discontent with the fraction they had 
accomplished, and dragged their feet wearily 
forward. 

To this are we come ; we have reached the 

95 



Missions Versus Militarism 

conviction that "Christianity is not a fin- 
ished product; it is a life of tendency and 
aspiration." So for the time being we are 
content to carry a sort of anomalous freight- 
age wherewith to serve the day after to- 
morrow ; for the present, at least, we march 
with soldiers burdened with their frightful 
paraphernalia of war and also with saints 
in whose hands are borne the symbols of 
our sacrifice, our peace, and our triumph — 
the cross, the olive branch, and the palm. 
It is hopeless to Christianize war. We may 
not immediately gain a complete victory, 
but the partial triumphs that now and then 
fall to our lot point to the perfect triumph 
toward which we press. 

But hold. Have men become so accus- 
tomed to the postponement of the Day of 
the Kingdom that the successive adjourn- 
ments of the final triumph have bred in the 
mind of the Church a sort of apathy, if not 
despair, of the final consummation? What 

9 6 



The Patience of Faith 

hope have we now that earlier days did not, 
could not have? How is it possible for us 
to discover even as much prospect of victory 
as other days clung to, when now the over- 
hanging skies are at their blackest? Can 
the world, seemingly at its worst, when with 
the most reckless inconsistency it encour- 
ages in the same breath and on the same 
soil the red cross of angels of mercy and 
the shrieking delirium of rapid firing guns ; 
can such a world justify its faith, its love, 
its hope, its reason and its claim to the 
crown of common sense which has in the 
main marked man from the brutes below 
him, if it willfully orders hell when heaven 
"may be had for the asking"? 

For men to keep on believing when every 
reason for doubting flames with each ris- 
ing sun, is to propose a change in our title, 
and an erasure of the "versus" and the sub- 
stitution of "with" as the linking word. 
Was it not Lincoln who flung out his under- 

97 



Missions Versus Militarism 

lying reason for expectation that there must 
be some time an end to slavery because of 
the impossibility of a conjoint life of free- 
dom and slavery in the same free govern- 
ment? And did his reason not win out? 
"Not Half Slave and Half Free." Plain 
common sense, eternal justice, humanity, 
God — all are agreed upon the divorce. 

In one respect the gloom shows a tend- 
ency to lighten. We are not so absorbingly 
striving to save individuals to the neglect 
of society as in past centuries. The fathers 
saw their chief duty in the salvation of 
some select individuals from the welter by 
which the Church was environed. Getting 
persons to heaven consumed the passionate 
energy of the saints. Getting heaven down 
among men, in their thinking, their traffic, 
their art, their government, their reconstitu- 
tion of all the relations of social order, was 
either an impossibility or a strain upon 
strength and obligation easily yielding to the 

9 8 



The Patience of Faith 

opiate of doubt or the "half-free, half-slave" 
creed of most Christians. 

Too profoundly immersed in such a faith 
and such a feeling were the older mission- 
ary programs. But of late years we 
have welcomed a new and a wise mis- 
sionary plan for capturing the world. We 
have placed increasing emphasis upon not 
only the man, but upon the man and the 
mass. The Church is falling heir to all the 
speculations, the conclusions, the programs 
which administrators and statesmen have 
found necessary for the better handling of 
their vast material. 

Militarism anticipated the Church in its 
use, not merely of the individual but of the 
individual and his fellow. Nor has the 
former force surrendered its policy whereby 
it seeks to train the peaceful citizen into an 
obedient soldier ; for, it still leads in its use 
of men in companies, in vast armies, ani- 
mated by one ruling mind. Kipling's line 

99 



Missions Versus Militarism 

sets forth its policy, its maxim, its creed: 
"The strength of the wolf is the pack; the 
strength of the pack is the wolf." 

To the Church has come somewhat late 
in the day the commanding call of our day : 
Transform the one man for this world and 
also the next. Transform society for this 
world. Of course the second call was heard 
and in a way was heeded in the first mani- 
festation of the gospel, yet more as a latent 
energy than as a clearly defined discipline 
and creed. The Church lifts her eye to the 
word of the age, and recalls the principle of 
the Master: "This ought ye to have done, 
and not have left the other undone." 

With these two arms we must embrace 
the world. Present-day strategy is steadily 
stirring its whole long frontier line to do 
what it has never done in the past. Who 
of the thousands who listened in intense 
quiet, alternating with tremendous applause, 
to the address of President Wilson before 
IOO 



The Patience of Faith 

the Federation of American Churches in 
Columbus, Ohio, in December, 1915, can 
forget his impressive statement of the dis- 
tinction between the two kinds of duties laid 
upon the Christian Church ? Individual lives 
have been transformed without question by 
the power of Christianity. "It is the only 
force in the world that I have ever heard of 
that does actually transform life. And the 
proof of that transformation is to be found 
all over the Christian world, and is multi- 
plied and repeated as Christianity gains 
fresh territory in the heathen world. ... I 
am hoping that the outcome of this confer- 
ence and all that we say and do about this 
important matter may be to remind the 
Church that it is put into the world, not only 
to save the individual soul, but to save so- 
ciety also . . . because you have got to 
save it in this world, not in the next. . . . 
We have nothing to do with society in the 
next world. We may have something to do 
IOI 



Missions Versus Militarism 

with the individual soul in the next world by 
getting it started for the next world, but we 
have nothing to do with the organization of 
society in the next world." 

Militarism with its coarse interpretation 
of history has had right of way both for 
record and prediction. Yet we cannot rid 
our minds of the belief that we are slowly 
emerging into an era of missions with its 
benign interpretation of history — the only 
power qualified to supplant its hoary antag- 
onist. This hope of a more beneficent su- 
premacy than our fathers knew, of a surer 
peace, of saner fellowship, and of a safer 
social order in which might shall become the 
guarantee of international order and justice 
— this ought not to be beyond reason. Pre- 
dictions of the good should be as well re- 
ceived as those of the bad. Right must have 
as fair a goal as might. Conservatism is 
not to laugh out of face the ongoing energy 
of life. The incredibles of yesterday are 
I02 



The Patience of Faith 

in command of the middle of the road to- 
day, and evermore the "old order changeth, 
giving place to new." 

Innumerable illustrations of a later age 
rising in its mass movement to accept as 
firm pillars of its progress the vague and 
useless and even stupid speculations of an 
age gone by, dimly held by a few souls, rise 
to our call. Where would one look with less 
hope of finding one than in the impossible 
Rasselas of Samuel Johnson? Yet there is 
the picture of an eager mechanic in argu- 
ment with the Prince trying to convince him 
that man would rival the swooping birds 
overhead in the use of a flying machine. 
How significant to us now is his talk ! "He 
would survey with equal security the marts 
of trade, and the fields of battle." Though 
the hopeful "artist" failed, a later day could 
not prevent the Wright brothers of Dayton, 
Ohio, from translating the fanciful dream 
of the eighteenth century into most service- 
103 



Missions Versus Militarism 

able, fascinating, daring exploits over every 
European battlefield from the flats of Bel- 
gium to the fastnesses of the Balkans. 

What is true in the realm of physics is 
none the less true in the realm of the ideal, 
of moral conduct, of social order, of polit- 
ical programs. Statesmen no longer nor in 
such numbers sink to the level of the aver- 
age moral pauper in Parliament who scoffed 
at the lofty idealism of Edmund Burke. 
His supporters were too venal. The stand- 
ards of the lofty idealist were too splendid 
for their coarser souls. They withdrew 
their suffrage. The world cannot be grate- 
ful enough, for Burke used the opportunity 
in his defense of his attitude like a prophet 
of the olden time. Like himself, he lifted 
the immediate question into a higher sphere 
of moral contemplation, and based it upon 
so universal a principle, that men who could 
not or would not heed its appeal have been 
silenced and shamed. What were the 
104 



The Patience of Faith 

charges? "That I have pushed the prin- 
ciples of general justice and benevolence too 
far." And his reply? "In every accident 
which may happen through life, in pain, in 
sorrow, in depression, and distress — I will call 
to mind this accusation and be comforted/' 

So mounts the path, and as an ignoble 
age surrenders its control of the path to a 
successor with happier skill in solving the 
hard riddles of time, and braver strokes in 
driving off the petty or powerful devils 
which encumber the road, combined with 
the patience of faith which toils through the 
"thousand years as one day," it dawns upon 
men that the vision of the few in a dark 
age is the prophecy which a new day frames 
into a great reality. 

The January, 191 6, number of Interna- 
tional Review of Missions sums up our hope 
thus : "Nothing that has happened, or that 
can happen, can alter in any way the will of 
God for the Evangelization of the world." 

105 



THE PEACE PROGRAM 

Though we discern little of its definite 
features, we are sure of a few peaks in its 
lofty sky line. 

When the whole body of Christians learns 
to emphasize the essentials of a common 
faith ; 

When the Home Church unites with the 
Foreign Church in common consecration of 
powers to service; 

When the various branches agree to 
divide up somewhat fairly, as has been at- 
tempted, the whole world, more thoroughly, 
more immediately; 

When Christians, the world over, engage 
in a vast mobilization of the "one army of 
the Living God" for triumph; 

When their munitions of holy warfare 
1 06 



The Peace Program 

shall leap to millions upon millions, fivefold, 
tenfold beyond the sums of a decade ago ; 

Further : when we shall have learned that 
preparedness and alliances lead to war ; and 
that love alone will not put a quietus upon 
militarism ; and that nations differ unevenly 
in their relation to moral appeals; and that 
some form of central force with its court 
of arbitration is needed, backed by a world- 
wide public opinion, and not the authority of 
autocracy, but the supreme law resting upon 
the people's will which the strongest nation 
must respect — 

Then will come World-Peace. 

"War in men's eyes shall be 
A monster of iniquity 

In the good time coming. 
Nations shall not quarrel then, 

To prove which is the stronger; 
Nor slaughter men for glory's sake — 

Wait a little longer." 



I07 



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